Mechai Viravaidya has been fighting poverty and disease in Southeast Asia through innovative promotions of safe sex practices. In this TED talk, he gives an amusing overview of how Thailand went from seven children per family to 1.5 in less than four decades and a 90 percent reduction in HIV infection rates from 1991 to 2003.
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
Finally men everywhere might have a birth control option that won’t rob them of the joys of living.
Scientists at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill may have discovered a cheap, convenient and noninvasive method of male birth control — ultrasound. The scientists believe that a single treatment can provide up to six months of infertility that is reversible.
The team has received a $100,000 Grand Challenges Explorations grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for their work. If the project pans out, this could have an incredible impact on global health. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Medgadget*
Last summer, my wife Greta and I spent a glorious week with old friends in a lovely home on the coast of Maine, immersed in wilderness and beautiful isolation. Isn’t it just wonderful?
Yet a home like this is completely out of reach for the vast majority of the world’s population, isn’t it? Even if everyone could afford such a place, there simply isn’t enough land on the planet to house everyone in such luxury, right? Maybe not. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at The Daily Monthly*
This year the topic of Blog Action Day is climate change, so I have decided to briefly mention the link between population control/contraception and climate. This connection is finally getting attention again. It was discussed when I was in college in the 70’s but became a political hot potato when China limited the number of children their citizens could legally have.
My roommate in college, KB, was an environmental science major. She and I had many discussions (arguments) over how many children a family should have. My mother had 8 children. I also had two half-siblings from my father’s first marriage and 5 step-siblings. She came from a family of 2 children. Read more »
*This blog post was originally published at Suture for a Living*
It’s no secret that doctors are disappointed with the way that the U.S. healthcare system is evolving. Most feel helpless about improving their work conditions or solving technical problems in patient care. Fortunately one young medical student was undeterred by the mountain of disappointment carried by his senior clinician mentors…
I am proud to be a part of the American Resident Project an initiative that promotes the writing of medical students residents and new physicians as they explore ideas for transforming American health care delivery. I recently had the opportunity to interview three of the writing fellows about how to…
Book Review: Is Empathy Learned By Faking It Till It’s Real?
I m often asked to do book reviews on my blog and I rarely agree to them. This is because it takes me a long time to read a book and then if I don t enjoy it I figure the author would rather me remain silent than publish my…
The Spirit Of The Place: Samuel Shem’s New Book May Depress You
When I was in medical school I read Samuel Shem s House Of God as a right of passage. At the time I found it to be a cynical yet eerily accurate portrayal of the underbelly of academic medicine. I gained comfort from its gallows humor and it made me…
Eat To Save Your Life: Another Half-True Diet Book
I am hesitant to review diet books because they are so often a tangled mess of fact and fiction. Teasing out their truth from falsehood is about as exhausting as delousing a long-haired elementary school student. However after being approached by the authors’ PR agency with the promise of a…
